Yellow Ape Productions, Inc. is a new production and distribution company founded by cult
film-maker Jim Haggerty. Coming up to his tenth year making films, Haggerty has finally decided
to take control of his films from soup to nuts.
"I've always been a bit of a control freak when it comes to my movies," Haggerty says. "For my
first two films I pretty much did everything except play all the
roles. But I felt I couldn't trust anyone else, so I was explaining
motivation to actors while constructing sets, hanging lights, aiming
the camera, I was a real jack of all trades. Of course, when you do
everything it's hard to do it all without flaws, so those earlier films
suffered a little bit."
But Haggerty's 'do-it-yourself' approach saw him through two
exciting and well-liked films - 'The Slasher' and 'I Dream of
Dracula.' While these films were ultra-low budget and not without
their drawbacks, Haggerty crafted two really entertaining films
that developed a small following and even garnered some critical
acclaim.
"I set out to make movies for myself," Haggerty says. "You have to
please yourself first as an artist. If nobody else likes it, at least
one person likes it and that makes it valid enough. You can't try to
please other people because you never know what other people might
like. You can only know what you like. If you like it, other people probably will - not everyone, but
there will be people that like what you do."
The early years were tough. Shooting the films always took longer than expected as Haggerty
was basically learning to be a film-maker while actually making films - the ultimate trial-by-fire.
And if shooting was hard, post-production was a nightmare.
"I hate editing," Haggerty says. "It's the worst. Shooting a movie is my favorite thing to do in the
world. My second favorite is showing my completed film to an audience and seeing how they react
to it. The bits in the middle that involve sitting and watching endless takes and re-takes and
stitching them together and re-stitching them is torturous."
Enter the lovely Susan Haggerty.
"My wife is truly the woman of my dreams," Haggerty says. "I met this beautiful woman in 2006
who was so perfect and so kind and caring and loving that I just fell madly in love with her. As
luck would have it she fell in love with me too and we've barely spent any time apart since we
met."
After a whirlwind courtship, engagement, and marriage, Susan turned out to be even more
perfect for Jim than he even imagined.
"I had kind of stepped away from making films," Haggerty says. "I had made this great movie
called 'From The Inside' that I was very proud of, but for several reasons I was unable to get
the post-production done, which was very frustrating. I felt like I was sitting on a really good
movie that I couldn't show everyone because I couldn't get it over that last two percent of post."
While the thought of starting something new before finishing the last project seemed out of the
question, Haggerty felt so recharged after meeting Susan he decided it might be a good idea.
"It was so long since I had worked on a film - years, in fact - and I was feeling like a new man
now that I'd met Susan, so I decided it was time to helm something new with Susan, even though
she had no prior film background."
So with his better-half by his side, Jim started shooting "Grave Danger," a darkly comic horror
anthology featuring a whole new set of faces.
"'Grave Danger' was a new beginning. Some of the people I'd worked with previously were not
the most helpful or encouraging, and sometimes I felt like they were
working against me. With Susan we put together a whole new cast and
crew of mostly people I hadn't worked with before and we found
some amazingly talented actors who really brought my vision to life."
With new actors in place, Haggerty also had some new talent behind
the camera. Besides his wife Susan, Jim made another great alliance.
"Dennis Newman is the brother of one of my dearest friend's friends"
Haggerty explains. "She had told me he was interested in making a
horror movie and wanted me to talk to him and give him some advice,
which I agreed to do. We hit it off really well, so I asked him to work
with me on this new movie I was about to shoot. I figured you can talk
all you want, but experiencing a film shoot first-hand was infinitely more valuable."
So Dennis came on board as a Production Assistant and soon became an invaluable part of the
crew.
"Dennis is great," Haggerty says. "He has such great insights, and it's wonderful to have another
person that's kind of on the same wavelength who gets what you're doing and can help figure out
logistics and who always has really good suggestions and is really reliable - and at the same time
just a great guy that everybody likes."
After 'Grave Danger,' Haggerty quickly jumped into shooting his next opus "Witchmaster
General" which would star Phil Lewis of L.A. Guns as the evil Dr. Gorgon, as well as the beautiful
scream queen Suzi Lorraine and former Playboy Playmate Colleen Marie.
"'Witchmaster General' was a dream come true on so many levels,"
Haggerty says. "First and foremost, it gave me the opportunity to
direct Phil Lewis, a guy I'd been a fan of since I was a kid. I've seen
L.A. Guns more times than I can count, they're an amazing band, and
here's the voice of that band in my film. That was huge."
Besides the all-star cast, Haggerty also picked up another great ally behind the scenes.
"Allon Scheyer was a guy I ran across right after we wrapped 'Grave Danger'," Haggerty
explains. "He's a really smart, really insightful guy who has a lot more technical know-how than I
do. I brought him in as a cinematographer and lighting director and he was great. Not just a total
professional but a real cool guy."
With his dream team in place of Dennis, Allon, and of course his wife Susan, Haggerty made what
he considers to be thus far his epic.
"'Grave Danger' is my ultimate movie - it's funny, it's scary, it's exciting. It's like all the movies
I've made before on steroids."
With production going along nicely, Haggerty was still bewildered on the post-production front.
Haggerty's game was tight on shooting - he'd made 'Grave Danger' in four weekends and
'Witchmaster General' even quicker than that. But these films were still stuck in the abyss
before seeing the light of day. That's when Susan revealed a hidden talent she never even knew
she had.
"After our honeymoon," Haggerty says. "I had tons of footage of us walking around Vegas having
a good time together that thought could be edited down to a fun little video. Susan went online,
downloaded some really crappy free program, and even though it was hard to work with and very
limiting, she came up with a really great looking vacation video we could show people. This was
when I realized she had a talent for this - and a lot of patience. We ran out and bought an
editing system and Susan banged out a rough edit of 'Witchmaster General' in three weeks!"
Last but not least, the new movies needed music. A movie's score is an integral part of it's
impact, and Jim needed someone he could depend on.
'As fate would have it, I ran into Mike Keller, who did the score to my last film, 'I Dream of
Dracula,'" Jim says. "I hadn't talked to him in a couple of years and he had actually moved out of
state for awhile but now he was back and had released a few albums on his own. I asked him if he
was interested in doing music for 'Grave Danger' and everything just picked up where we left
off. He gave us some excellent music for the movie and it really brought out a lot of the scenes.
So good to be working with Mike again."
So now everyone is in place. Jim has a great crew on the set, a crackerjack editor he happens to
be married to, and an amazing composer to score everything. The only thing left to worry about
was distribution.
"That was my only other weak link, apart from post-production," Haggerty says. "I was so
meticulous and obsessive over everything for my first two films, but then when it came time to
find a distributor I didn't know the first thing about networking or where to find a distributor
or any of that stuff. It was rather disheartening - I worked so hard on my first two movies and
they sat under my bed for years."
"It was actually not until I faced really harsh rejection that kicked
my ass into gear," Haggerty says. "I had found a company that was
distributing really low-budget stuff like mine - and stuff that wasn't
even as good. I thought if they'd release this stuff, they'd release
my stuff. But the guy at that company hated my film 'I Dream of
Dracula.' I called to ask him what he thought of it and he basically
savaged it with a hammer. I couldn't get the guy off the phone, he
had so many things he wanted to point out was wrong with it."
The rejection was jarring, but inevitably it helped.
"I never care when people don't like my films, but I guess since this was where I thought I would
finally find some success it was such a letdown," Haggerty reveals. "I was depressed for an
afternoon, then I got my Irish up and said 'fuck this guy - if he doesn't like my movie somebody
else will' and I got online and started researching any company that seemed like they might
release films like mine. Finally I had a bite."
Getting his films 'I Dream of Dracula' and 'The Slasher' was a victory and gave Haggerty some
validation, but it was a small victory when his films ended up on multiple-movie sets. It gave him
the opportunity to get his films seen by a wider audience and he was able to walk into his local
Best Buy and see his films on the shelf, but it didn't really do much to promote them.
"It was great to have my movies released in stores nationwide," Haggerty says. "But it was only
as part of a collection of other movies. The company were not interested in promoting the movies
or the people who made them, they were just putting out a value-pack of movies. So I decided
next time I needed to be in control of not only production but also distribution. And in an age
where brick and mortar stores are going away, everything is really going online, so I decided why
not cut out the middle-man and do things myself."
And here we are now. One month after it's launch, Yellow Ape Productions, Inc. hosted a gala
premiere for their first film 'Grave Danger' on Long Island with much of the cast and crew in
attendance. The film is already getting good press and is now available on the company website.
And the release schedule is jam-packed - April will see the release of 'Witchmaster General.' In
June, Haggerty's lost film 'From The Inside' will finally see the light of day. In August,
Haggerty's first real comedy, 'Is This A Joke' will premiere. Haggerty's action movie 'Lenora
Rose' comes out in October. And in December, it's the return to the horror genre with 'Don't Go
Out Tonight.'
"I'm really excited about the company," Haggerty says. "This is what I've always wanted to do -
just be able to crank out my movies one after the other and develop a brand name - I hope that
Yellow Ape will become as widely known and recognized as studios like Troma or Full Moon - a
brand-name where genre fans can always count on a certain type of entertainment."
film-maker Jim Haggerty. Coming up to his tenth year making films, Haggerty has finally decided
to take control of his films from soup to nuts.
"I've always been a bit of a control freak when it comes to my movies," Haggerty says. "For my
first two films I pretty much did everything except play all the
roles. But I felt I couldn't trust anyone else, so I was explaining
motivation to actors while constructing sets, hanging lights, aiming
the camera, I was a real jack of all trades. Of course, when you do
everything it's hard to do it all without flaws, so those earlier films
suffered a little bit."
But Haggerty's 'do-it-yourself' approach saw him through two
exciting and well-liked films - 'The Slasher' and 'I Dream of
Dracula.' While these films were ultra-low budget and not without
their drawbacks, Haggerty crafted two really entertaining films
that developed a small following and even garnered some critical
acclaim.
"I set out to make movies for myself," Haggerty says. "You have to
please yourself first as an artist. If nobody else likes it, at least
one person likes it and that makes it valid enough. You can't try to
please other people because you never know what other people might
like. You can only know what you like. If you like it, other people probably will - not everyone, but
there will be people that like what you do."
The early years were tough. Shooting the films always took longer than expected as Haggerty
was basically learning to be a film-maker while actually making films - the ultimate trial-by-fire.
And if shooting was hard, post-production was a nightmare.
"I hate editing," Haggerty says. "It's the worst. Shooting a movie is my favorite thing to do in the
world. My second favorite is showing my completed film to an audience and seeing how they react
to it. The bits in the middle that involve sitting and watching endless takes and re-takes and
stitching them together and re-stitching them is torturous."
Enter the lovely Susan Haggerty.
"My wife is truly the woman of my dreams," Haggerty says. "I met this beautiful woman in 2006
who was so perfect and so kind and caring and loving that I just fell madly in love with her. As
luck would have it she fell in love with me too and we've barely spent any time apart since we
met."
After a whirlwind courtship, engagement, and marriage, Susan turned out to be even more
perfect for Jim than he even imagined.
"I had kind of stepped away from making films," Haggerty says. "I had made this great movie
called 'From The Inside' that I was very proud of, but for several reasons I was unable to get
the post-production done, which was very frustrating. I felt like I was sitting on a really good
movie that I couldn't show everyone because I couldn't get it over that last two percent of post."
While the thought of starting something new before finishing the last project seemed out of the
question, Haggerty felt so recharged after meeting Susan he decided it might be a good idea.
"It was so long since I had worked on a film - years, in fact - and I was feeling like a new man
now that I'd met Susan, so I decided it was time to helm something new with Susan, even though
she had no prior film background."
So with his better-half by his side, Jim started shooting "Grave Danger," a darkly comic horror
anthology featuring a whole new set of faces.
"'Grave Danger' was a new beginning. Some of the people I'd worked with previously were not
the most helpful or encouraging, and sometimes I felt like they were
working against me. With Susan we put together a whole new cast and
crew of mostly people I hadn't worked with before and we found
some amazingly talented actors who really brought my vision to life."
With new actors in place, Haggerty also had some new talent behind
the camera. Besides his wife Susan, Jim made another great alliance.
"Dennis Newman is the brother of one of my dearest friend's friends"
Haggerty explains. "She had told me he was interested in making a
horror movie and wanted me to talk to him and give him some advice,
which I agreed to do. We hit it off really well, so I asked him to work
with me on this new movie I was about to shoot. I figured you can talk
all you want, but experiencing a film shoot first-hand was infinitely more valuable."
So Dennis came on board as a Production Assistant and soon became an invaluable part of the
crew.
"Dennis is great," Haggerty says. "He has such great insights, and it's wonderful to have another
person that's kind of on the same wavelength who gets what you're doing and can help figure out
logistics and who always has really good suggestions and is really reliable - and at the same time
just a great guy that everybody likes."
After 'Grave Danger,' Haggerty quickly jumped into shooting his next opus "Witchmaster
General" which would star Phil Lewis of L.A. Guns as the evil Dr. Gorgon, as well as the beautiful
scream queen Suzi Lorraine and former Playboy Playmate Colleen Marie.
"'Witchmaster General' was a dream come true on so many levels,"
Haggerty says. "First and foremost, it gave me the opportunity to
direct Phil Lewis, a guy I'd been a fan of since I was a kid. I've seen
L.A. Guns more times than I can count, they're an amazing band, and
here's the voice of that band in my film. That was huge."
Besides the all-star cast, Haggerty also picked up another great ally behind the scenes.
"Allon Scheyer was a guy I ran across right after we wrapped 'Grave Danger'," Haggerty
explains. "He's a really smart, really insightful guy who has a lot more technical know-how than I
do. I brought him in as a cinematographer and lighting director and he was great. Not just a total
professional but a real cool guy."
With his dream team in place of Dennis, Allon, and of course his wife Susan, Haggerty made what
he considers to be thus far his epic.
"'Grave Danger' is my ultimate movie - it's funny, it's scary, it's exciting. It's like all the movies
I've made before on steroids."
With production going along nicely, Haggerty was still bewildered on the post-production front.
Haggerty's game was tight on shooting - he'd made 'Grave Danger' in four weekends and
'Witchmaster General' even quicker than that. But these films were still stuck in the abyss
before seeing the light of day. That's when Susan revealed a hidden talent she never even knew
she had.
"After our honeymoon," Haggerty says. "I had tons of footage of us walking around Vegas having
a good time together that thought could be edited down to a fun little video. Susan went online,
downloaded some really crappy free program, and even though it was hard to work with and very
limiting, she came up with a really great looking vacation video we could show people. This was
when I realized she had a talent for this - and a lot of patience. We ran out and bought an
editing system and Susan banged out a rough edit of 'Witchmaster General' in three weeks!"
Last but not least, the new movies needed music. A movie's score is an integral part of it's
impact, and Jim needed someone he could depend on.
'As fate would have it, I ran into Mike Keller, who did the score to my last film, 'I Dream of
Dracula,'" Jim says. "I hadn't talked to him in a couple of years and he had actually moved out of
state for awhile but now he was back and had released a few albums on his own. I asked him if he
was interested in doing music for 'Grave Danger' and everything just picked up where we left
off. He gave us some excellent music for the movie and it really brought out a lot of the scenes.
So good to be working with Mike again."
So now everyone is in place. Jim has a great crew on the set, a crackerjack editor he happens to
be married to, and an amazing composer to score everything. The only thing left to worry about
was distribution.
"That was my only other weak link, apart from post-production," Haggerty says. "I was so
meticulous and obsessive over everything for my first two films, but then when it came time to
find a distributor I didn't know the first thing about networking or where to find a distributor
or any of that stuff. It was rather disheartening - I worked so hard on my first two movies and
they sat under my bed for years."
"It was actually not until I faced really harsh rejection that kicked
my ass into gear," Haggerty says. "I had found a company that was
distributing really low-budget stuff like mine - and stuff that wasn't
even as good. I thought if they'd release this stuff, they'd release
my stuff. But the guy at that company hated my film 'I Dream of
Dracula.' I called to ask him what he thought of it and he basically
savaged it with a hammer. I couldn't get the guy off the phone, he
had so many things he wanted to point out was wrong with it."
The rejection was jarring, but inevitably it helped.
"I never care when people don't like my films, but I guess since this was where I thought I would
finally find some success it was such a letdown," Haggerty reveals. "I was depressed for an
afternoon, then I got my Irish up and said 'fuck this guy - if he doesn't like my movie somebody
else will' and I got online and started researching any company that seemed like they might
release films like mine. Finally I had a bite."
Getting his films 'I Dream of Dracula' and 'The Slasher' was a victory and gave Haggerty some
validation, but it was a small victory when his films ended up on multiple-movie sets. It gave him
the opportunity to get his films seen by a wider audience and he was able to walk into his local
Best Buy and see his films on the shelf, but it didn't really do much to promote them.
"It was great to have my movies released in stores nationwide," Haggerty says. "But it was only
as part of a collection of other movies. The company were not interested in promoting the movies
or the people who made them, they were just putting out a value-pack of movies. So I decided
next time I needed to be in control of not only production but also distribution. And in an age
where brick and mortar stores are going away, everything is really going online, so I decided why
not cut out the middle-man and do things myself."
And here we are now. One month after it's launch, Yellow Ape Productions, Inc. hosted a gala
premiere for their first film 'Grave Danger' on Long Island with much of the cast and crew in
attendance. The film is already getting good press and is now available on the company website.
And the release schedule is jam-packed - April will see the release of 'Witchmaster General.' In
June, Haggerty's lost film 'From The Inside' will finally see the light of day. In August,
Haggerty's first real comedy, 'Is This A Joke' will premiere. Haggerty's action movie 'Lenora
Rose' comes out in October. And in December, it's the return to the horror genre with 'Don't Go
Out Tonight.'
"I'm really excited about the company," Haggerty says. "This is what I've always wanted to do -
just be able to crank out my movies one after the other and develop a brand name - I hope that
Yellow Ape will become as widely known and recognized as studios like Troma or Full Moon - a
brand-name where genre fans can always count on a certain type of entertainment."
| About Yellow Ape Productions, Inc. |